


off-kilter; balance

by ThinkingCAPSLOCK



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Psychological, Slow Dread
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-06-01 02:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6497287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThinkingCAPSLOCK/pseuds/ThinkingCAPSLOCK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's just something about Xiao that isn't quite... (and there's no word for it, just the lingering traces of frost and smoke on the bottle of medicine)</p>
            </blockquote>





	off-kilter; balance

A tilt of the head, exactly angled at the same degree as the curve of his mouth. Long, thin, fingers that lace beneath the jaw, sharpened fingernails, protruding knuckles. Skin unmarred by scar or freckle or dirt, glass-smooth, moon pale. Tufts of fur, wisps of hair, the flow of silk, brown on white on white. 

It's always colder in the room when he smiles. 

The air tastes of smoke, thick and dark. It's wood smoke and tobacco and incense (but Xiao doesn't smoke, and no fires are lit). The cloud curls into his clothes and skin and mouth without origin, without end. It's choking, heavy, the top two feet of his room. Yet when he moves, he is the bow cutting the wave, the knife slicing the skin. Uninterrupted. Fluid. Graceful.

He is willing to help, of course. He goes into the strange cabinet, as high as his head, twice his weight. He moves the drawers in patterns, open and shut. One hand to hold, one hand to gather. His belts and scarves clink as he moves, clinks of metal on wood, echoes that should be snatched and eaten by the thick drapery, the piles of cushions, the veiled objects of suspicious sizes throughout his room. But they sound well into his search, well beyond time, their rhythm matching the drum of the drawers. Then, with a flick of his wrist he's perched back on top, the cabinet still, the room silent. The scale appears at his side, balanced, unmoving, as if it had been waiting there. 

It was absent before this moment. It always is. 

Mixes and weights of powders, root and bone and mineral, are added to each side of the scale and removed. A dark liquid poured from one flask to another, whisked away into a drawer as a bubble threatens to pop the cork right back out. Shifting colours appear as the medicine takes form: black, dull purple, crimson, burnt orange. A flicker of light shoots through the smoke and distant curtained windows. It strikes the scales, the medicine, forcing their reflections outwards. The bottle is brown-flecked white. Xiao's skin is white-flecked gold. 

'It's all about balance,' he says, his face alight, skin aglow. He places the medicine flask on one scale. It sinks, near scraping the top of the wood cabinet, the slightest of distances between them. He draws a feather, pristine and blue-black, the length of one boney finger, from behind him. He runs it through the gap between scale and wood, and it fits (as a breath fits the lungs, as the sky fits the horizon: as if it was born to be there). He places it on the other side of the scale. 'Balance is key. There can't be shadow without sun. There can't be cures without the disease. There can't be justice without crime. Nor crime without justice.'

The scales creak and shift as he speaks. The two objects hang, impossible, immovable, in balance. 

Then the medicine is lifted off, and the feather disappears in the wind of the movement. Xiao's feet grace the ground, the fabric of his skirt moving around him, oil on water, thick but flowing. He hands over the flask, and where skin meets skin, there's the briefest of static shocks before the tip of an iceberg crashes down. Cold enough to burn, not lingering long enough for damage.

He peppers his words with thank yous and goodbyes, a small wave, one hand tucked under the other elbow. It's then that his eyes shift, and there's a flash of electric current leaping from a broken wire, the curl of a viper before it strikes, the silent and mountain heavy force of a God amongst mere mortals. Eternity contained in the smallest drop of blue in the entire universe. 

Kohl swallows it again in moments, the eye closing its knowledge to the world. The ghost of its glow haunts in the wake. The door swings shut without a movement, without a sound.


End file.
